


Shadows of Maybes

by Sand3



Category: Marvel 616, Young Avengers
Genre: Gen, Mayfly-verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4010341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sand3/pseuds/Sand3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was slightly ironic, because of how hard they’d been running and how terrifying the ravenous monsters of the nightmare-scapes had been, that the first major meltdown happened on a world where they weren’t being chased at all, where there were no monsters, where everything was still and quiet and long, long dead.</p><p>Based on one of the mayfly worlds pictured in issue 8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows of Maybes

“ _It’s wearing us down_ ,” David had said. “ _Each world we go to, it targets one of us, targets our worst fears of our worst selves_.” He’d said that, shaking and hugging himself, his face pale and clammy with sweat, after the President David dimension. And he had been right, he must have been, because everything they kept seeing, every broken, horrifying dystopia had said: _You’re a monster. The people you’re with are monsters. You are **all** monsters._

It was always horrifying, it always shook them to the core- the person a nightmare-world was targeting and the rest of the team as well. But most of them were too surreal, too outlandish; once they were in the rearview mirror by a few hours, the chill faded, the nightmare ended, they rebounded and moved on. They were super heroes. They did hard stuff and they got over it; that was part of the job. They had fantastic powers that would be terrible and destructive if they went bad. But they wouldn’t, because they were super heroes. They kept going, they kept fighting, they kept strutting and telling themselves it would all be okay, because they were super heroes.

They’d been running so hard, across dozens of horror-worlds, where they’d been chased and shot at and pursued by horrible shadow-beasts and science abominations, it was like a season of Doctor Who. And they’d held it together for over a month. It was slightly ironic, because of how hard they’d been running and how terrifying the ravenous monsters of the nightmare-scapes had been, that the first major meltdown happened on a world where they weren’t being chased at all, where there were no monsters, where everything was still and quiet and long, long dead.

The air was bone-dry and stale, with no smell and neither hot nor cold, like the air on a plane. The ground was covered in dust- a dry, fine silt that stayed where it was, undisturbed by any breath of wind. And there were bones- skeletons laid out on the cobbled ground, weapons, pieces of armor, decayed shreds of cloth and leather collapsed around them.

“Okay, this looks old-timey...” Billy said, looking around at the buildings and then glancing at a sword loosely clasped in a skeleton-hand that he carefully stepped around.

“... It looks Asgardian,” David corrected, crouching next to another skeleton.

“It’s like a bomb was dropped or something,” Kate said, glancing into a dark tavern to witness more skeletons lying around. “Everybody just dropped dead in the middle of the day, doing whatever they were doing.”

“A bomb would have torn the buildings and bodies apart,” Noh-varr shook his head slowly. “This looks more like chemical warfare. Which might account for why nothing has grown after the attack. There are no plants, not even lichen,” he brushed his fingers against the chalky wall of a building.

“You’re thinking too sciency,” Loki said, his voice subdued and emotionless as he wandered slowly through the street, seeming entirely uninterested in the skeletons and dead city around him. “It was almost certainly a curse of some sort.”

“You know what kind of curse did this?” America asked, frowning as she observed Loki’s detachment.

“Quite a few ways to accomplish killing a city. It’s difficult to tell, with their flesh all gone, exactly what felled them,” Loki said in monotone, eyes turned straight ahead of him as he picked his way over the dry, lifeless cobbles. “As Miss Bishop noted, it appears to have happened in the middle of an ordinary day, thus there was no prolonged sickness. Perhaps ravenous shadow-beasts were summoned from beyond the veil that stripped the flesh from their bones. Perhaps the souls were simply pulled from their bodies and the corpses left to rot.”

Loki strolled along, leisurely and calm, his face as blank as his voice. “There’s simply insufficient data out here to tell what manner of hex was cast... or by whom.” His steps faltered slightly as he said the last three words, and then there was an almost audible snap before suddenly he was running flat out.

“ _Loki!_ ” Kate shouted as the rest started chasing after him. “ _Wait!_ ”

America did one of her epic jumps, landing a few yards ahead of Loki and turning to grab him. The next moment she was on her back, staring at the colorless sky and Loki was still charging up the street. “ _Keep on him!_ ” Teddy shouted at his teammates as he skidded to a stop next to America. “Are you okay?”

America’s expression faded from shock to fury and she launched herself to her feet, snarling, “I’m gonna _kill_ him!”

“I didn’t know he was that stro--”

“ _He surprised me!_ ” America snapped, starting to run again. “Where the _fuck_ is he going?!”

“This world was obviously meant for him,” Teddy said, racing along next to her. “He’s probably looking for the punch-line.”

The guess seemed to be confirmed as the street gave way to a large square and Loki could be seen scrambling up the steps of what had to be a palace on the far side. Their teammates seemed to have caught up to him (thanks to little short gods having little short legs) but were apparently having as little success as America in slowing him down. The whole party disappeared inside the palace as Teddy and America were crossing the square, and when they finally slipped through the huge, ornate doors, they could hear a young voice that was almost unrecognizable for the hysteria cracking it.

“ _NO NO NO NO NO!_ ” Loki was screaming.

“ _Loki, you need to cal_ \-- _huphh!_ ” David was knocked back a few feet by Loki’s small hand slamming into his gut a moment before Loki spun around and started running back toward the door, tears streaming down his face.

“Grab him,” America said, bracing her feet and narrowing her eyes.

“Yep,” Teddy agreed, pouncing as Loki tried to duck past them, managing to hook an arm around the kid’s waist as America caught a wrist and a leg.

“ _No! No! I didn’t want to- I’m sorry! I- I--_ ” Loki shrieked and struggled; a squirming godling turned out to be harder to hang onto than an angry cat.

“ _Loki, stop!_ Loki- _Hey!_ ” Teddy caught a flailing elbow in the nose and felt and tasted blood for a few seconds. He managed to get his other arm around Loki and then all at once the struggle stopped with Loki’s arms wrapping around Teddy’s neck and the child starting to sob brokenly into his shoulder. Teddy sighed, equal parts relieved and exasperated, and adjusted his hold for hugging rather than restraining.

“ _It’s my fault! It’s all my fault! I made this! It’s my fault!_ ” Loki bawled.

“We need to get him out of here,” Kate said sharply, crouched next to David, who was wheezing and rubbing the spot where Loki had hit him.

“We need Loki to find the trail,” Noh-varr pointed out.

“Well we need to get him _away_ from _that_ , he is _losing_ his _shit!_ ” Kate snapped, jerking her thumb toward the far end of the hall.

Teddy squinted through the semi-darkness to see a throne and a dozen or so skeletons of people who had apparently been rushing toward it whenever whatever had happened, happened. One of the nearest was wearing a half-decayed red cape and a silver, winged helmet. The skeleton seated on the throne, whom had apparently died along with everyone else in this world, had a distinctive, golden, horned helmet. “... Okay, yeah,” Teddy nodded faintly and swept up Loki’s legs, hoisting the child up while Loki continued to sob into his shoulder. “We should go find somewhere a bit less corpsey to calm him down.”

“Everything’s dead here, so, I mean, it’s probably safe to hole up for a few hours and get some rest, right?” Billy suggested. “Unless the curse-thing is still around.”

“The Asgardians here must have been killed instantly. If the curse was still active, we’d already be dead,” David rasped, shaking his head. “This might be the ‘safest’ world we see for a while.”

“Right. Let’s go find Chico a closet without any skeletons,” America said, walking toward the doors.

Loki kept making vague, all-encompassing confessions as Teddy carried him from the palace and back into the gray, dead world outside. His voice had dropped to a whimper, his apparent claims of responsibility for everything bad that ever happened anywhere now soft and not reaching much farther than Teddy’s ear. “ _I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be like this..._ ”

“... Every so often, he acts like a kid. And I’m always surprised,” Billy noted quietly.

“Yeah...” Teddy agreed, nodding.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last year and maybe at one point had some idea that I might do something more with it, but I think I've lost that trail, so I decided to post it as a one-shot. I think it stands alone well enough.


End file.
